Shelf

How to spell shelf

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce shelf

What does shelf mean?

1. nounA flat horizontal board or surface fixed to a wall or inside a cupboard, used for holding objects.

Shelf in a sentence

• She placed the heavy dictionary on the top shelf.

• The corner shelf in the kitchen holds all the spice jars.

Where does shelf come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Shelf comes from Middle English schelfe, which is closely related to the Middle Low German schelf, meaning a set of shelves or a board fixed to a wall. The deeper Germanic sense behind these forms is something split off or cut flat, a thin slab of board, and that idea of a flat horizontal surface has stayed with the word ever since. By the late 1300s English was using it for the familiar board on which objects rest, and by the 1500s it had also stretched to describe a flat ledge of rock or sand, as in a continental shelf. The plural breaks the usual pattern by turning the f into v, giving 'shelves', which is the most common reason the singular spelling trips writers up. That f-to-v swap is shared with relatives like 'half' and 'self', so remembering that family helps anchor the single f at the end of shelf.

How the word is built

• shelf (single root, from Middle Low German schelf 'set of shelves')